First Snow......

Who's ready for the white stuff????

NOT ME!!

This is what we woke up to this morning, something not right about snow on a Jack-o-lantern.

The boys on the other hand were THRILLED with the snow. Kolby clapped and jumped up and down when he looked out the window.

They had a blast playing when we got home.

This picture cracks me up of Luke, hat to big and he still manages to have his ears sticking out :)


Think this boy likes the snow?


We thought we were in the clear with Kolby's eye. But two nights ago he slipped on our tile and fell on his face... his surgery side. We think the stitches on the inside held but the outside is not a pretty sight. (Its now bandaged) Poor little guy now has a big goose egg right above his scar. But as you can see from the pics he is still not letting anything keep him down. And he thinks his "band aid" is pretty cool stuff.

Pumpkin carving time

On Saturday we did our annual pumpkin carving.

The boys took their "job" of cleaning out the pumpkins very seriously. The had their whole arms in the pumpkins most of the time.

Notice the football game on in the background? Can't have a Saturday with collage ball on.

Dewey is doing a great job of cleaning out pumpkins while watching his team play. Too bad they lost....... hum.... who's team won.... yep mine :D

We decorated the house with the least scary Halloween things I could find. Most of it is Mickey Mouse Halloween. But the boys still claim it to be "very scary".
Here's Bailey modeling one of our pumpkins for you. Kolby picked out the "Boo!" Ghost for Dewey to do.

We had some great patterns this year, I love how this one turned out.

Hope everyone is having a great Halloween week.

Kolby has a new scar

A few months ago we noticed Kolby had a bump over his left eye that was not going away. We went to his Pediatrician who ran multiple tests but was unable to determine what it was. We were referred to a specialist here in Cedar City, he was able to tell us it was a Dermoid cyst and fairly common in the brow area. But that we would have to have it removed as it would continue to grow in size. Being that we live in a small town we were sent to Primary Children's hospital in Salt Lake City. We met with a pediatric plastic surgeon who agreed it was a Dermoid cyst and scheduled the surgery.

The big day was Wed, they scheduled the surgery in Provo just 3 hours North of us. Because of the Swine flu scare Luke was not allowed in the hospital (nobody under 14) so grandpa and grandma came to the rescue and he stayed with them. Dewey, Kolby and I went up Tues night and stayed with our wonderful friends Troy and Wendy (huge thanks to them!).

All in all everything went better then we could have hoped. The hospital staff was wonderful, so very nice to all of us. Kolby did great, we took up our portable DVD player and his favorite movie in the entire world "Cars" for him to watch. He fell asleep before going in and stayed asleep after they wheeled him out. (huge help for me since I was not sure how I would handle him crying and screaming while they took him away)

The surgery went really well, the Doctor confirmed it had all the appearances of a cyst. It was hard hearing him cry (scream) as he came out of anaesthesia. I climbed onto the bed with him and he calmed down. Once he could talk he asked to watch his movie again, which made the nurses laugh :)

We were able to drive home Wed and Kolby is doing better then we could have hoped. The swelling has gone down and most important he doesn't seem to be in pain.

This is waiting for him to go into surgery.

Now the hard part is trying to keep a little boy who runs full speed ahead every waking hour, down and relaxed. On a normal day he hits is head at least 14 times. So I'm spending most of my time running behind trying to catch/prevent/stop any falls.

We are so glad this is over and everything is fine. A large amount of stress and worry has been lifted from.

Gotta love mother nature

We have wanted a patio set since we moved into our house four years ago. I have had many day dreams of picnic lunch's with the boys, late dinner under the stars with Dew and of course Sunday morning relaxing with my coffee and paper.

So we were thrilled to buy a "new to us" set last week.

This is a heavy large round table with a beautiful glass top inlaid with a leaf design. (It took both Dew and I to move it from the truck to our back deck) And six matching chairs.

We set it up on Thursday, but unfortunately the temps have dropped so we had not made it out to try it out yet.

Then came Sunday... and the wind

Not just a few breezes here and there but 60 a mile wind gusts. We looked out the windows to solid dust clouds and our trees bent sideways.


About halfway through the day Dewey asked me to come look out the patio door. "See anything missing?" He asked. I'm counting tree's the barn and hay pile and didn't notice anything. (to be fair the table had only been there three days I was not used to seeing it ) "Stand back and look to the left"..............

Wow
Who knew a glass table top could shatter into a zillion pieces? And who would guess that a wind storm could pick up a table and send it flying 10 feet to the North to land upside down.
So lesson learned, I'm not sure if its that we are not meant to have a patio set. Or maybe its, if we choose to live in a wind tunnel we should not have anything on our deck.
And my patio daydreams can wait a little longer :)

Oktoberfest!

Its that time of year again

Oktoberfest!!

I know its still September and that our Oktoberfest may be the smallest festival ever to be called Oktoberfest but we still love it!

They hold it every year at Brian Head a small ski resort about a half hour away from us.

They had a Polka band.... who doesn't love Polka music ;) Dewey and the boys got to have their brats and apple strudel. We (along with the 5 other people watching) clapped and danced to the band. It was such a fun lunch.

It was perfect weather so we took a walk to show the boys the ski lift and runs. (hoping to get Luke skiing the year)

This was our "practice" lift ride. I can just imagine these three in a few years all in their ski gear tearing it up coming down the mountain.


Brian head was so pretty with the tree's just starting to change colors.


On the way home we took a side route and found that lower down the mountain the leaves have already changed. Gorgeous colors, bright fire red and orange, sunshine yellow. We stopped and gathered leaves, the boys loved finding all the different colors.

Another perfect Sunday!!!

I love the fall, but it seems like every part of it is so fleeting, I hope we can go up and see the leaves again before its to late.

Ghost towns and Wildfires

We love to find and explore new things. Since we have lived in Southern Utah we have heard about the many mining Ghost towns in the area. We also bought a rock hounding book that lists all the gems and stones that can be found in the state.

A few weeks ago we decided to go exploring. About an hour to the NW of us is the remains of the mining town Frisco. We did some research before we left to learn the towns history. At its peak a little over a hundred years ago this town was populated by 6000 people.

We were able to find some amazing remains, these are the furnaces used to make charcoal for the mining equipment.

These are in remarkably good shape for being neglected and left to the elements.

With Kolby running by you get an idea of just how large these structures are.

And is it just me or isn't the brick work amazing?

We took a bunch of dirt roads looking for the rest of the town but were not able to find much. We did come across the old town cemetery. Very very strange to walk through a desert ghost town cemetery, with markers over 100 years old.

Our rock hounding adventure although fun for the boys to dig with shovels and buckets led to no huge discoveries. Mainly because I saw no polished gems lying on the ground so other then that I didn't know what I was looking for. Apparently we need to do a tad more research on rocks and what they look like in there natural state, before we find some good ones.


On our way back into town this was our view

A lightning strike fire started about 20 minutes to the South of us. It was left as a "controlled" burn but as soon as the winds picked up it quickly become out of control. Thankfully the fire is now out but we lived for a solid week in a smoke haze smelling like campfire.

Luke's first day of Preschool

Luke's first day of preschool was Monday, to say he has been excited is a huge understatement. This morning he was up at 5 am (as a side note we are never up at 5am for any reason, we are happy if we make it out of bed at 6) He fully dressed himself, shoes and all and was sitting on the couch waiting for us to take him to school.

This is one little by who LOVES school, he loves everything about it, the kids the projects, the teachers. He asks every night what he is doing the next day, he is none to pleased on the weekend when its mommy daddy time :)

As I'm dropping him off and seeing kids crying begging not to go I feel so lucky to have found the right choice for Luke.

This is his first day outfit picked out by Luke himself.

With Luke in School it leaves more Mommy and Kolby time. So far I seem to be fun enough for Kolby he doesn't seem to mind not going to school with Luke, but we will see how long I can stay entertaining and hold the little guys attention :)